writing

[Writing] is lunacy. . . You have to be obsessed. People write me all the time, or get in touch with me about “what should I do if I want to be a writer?” I say well, do you really want to be a writer? It’s not like something you’d want to be—it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be. But...

Walter Mosley on learning to love rewriting: Writing is rewriting. The first draft is the jabber you forced on that blind date. She was hoping for someone to ask her what she was feeling, but all you said was, and then I, and then I, and then I, and then . . . The first draft is meant to be...

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals. Don DeLillo

Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It’s just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different. Ben Hecht

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Jules Renard

'Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.' Iris Murdoch

In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, Instead of telling us a thing was "terrible", describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description...

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." Jules Renard

Writing is my vacation from living. Eugene O’Neill

Hi folks, This is a pretty open question (perhaps also a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string? question), but I know some of you write historical fiction, so I thought I'd ask. At what point do you say, "Enough already, these are my sources and now I must write"? I appreciate that research is an...

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand not between the hand and the page. Janet Burroway

'Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.' John Irving

“Hard writing makes easy reading.” Wallace Stegner

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea...

'The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.' Allan Sillitoe

Writing is...being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie intense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. Mary Gaitskill

There's a lot of tasteful writing out there—nice, tidy, clean—but sometimes it's excess, rawness and the unpolished that work. Dan Vyleta

Hi everyone, That question above – What fills you with wonder? – I've been thinking about it lately, thinking about what I like to read (all kinds of things) and what I like to write (mostly fantasy). I love that feeling of awe, that feeling of smallness that wonderful things engender. The...

I've been thinking about backstory and how best to handle it, and I find my self wondering what you think. I've also been thinking about the received wisdom of craft in general – learn the "rules" before you break them, show-don't-tell-or-go-to-hell, don't write on a Tuesday when the wind is in...

Hi, all. I am surprised to find myself enjoying twitter (I know, a decade late. Hey, I had dial up internet not too long ago!) I am finding many poets and writers there helping each other. Maybe it's because I am new to it and being careful who I follow--and who follows me? I expected to find...